The mystery of space

by Robert T. Browne

, then, we have in this geometric alphabet the very secret of the divine geometry. With these, and in the kosmic laboratory of chaogeny, the Creative Logos has measured off the limits and confines of space; with them He has traced out its dimensions the archeological evidences of which we may view in the space-mind itself; and with them he has established the manner of its appearance to the Thinker. In dimensions, three, and yet not three, but one, Space, the eternal progenitor of all forms and energies, having received the divine fiat in the beginning that thus far it should extend and no further, persists in faithful obedience to the law of its being—tridimensionality. It must be so because it is thus sanctioned by the highest faculty in man that can render judgment thereon. If tridimensionality inhere in the space-mind, as the law of its being and in the intuitional consciousness as the norm of its essential nature and as the easiest and simplest expression of the tuitional mind, how can it be gainsaid that these considerations obviate the necessity of the mathetical hyperspace?

If the reality of things is hidden from us and if we are, therefore, unable to perceive their real essences it is because our mode of thought and our consciousness have obscured our vision and limited us to this state of paucity of perception. It is not because reality is itself a hidden, inscrutable quantity nor that its modus vivendi is "unknowable"; but because we being multiformly limited, "cabined, cribbed and confined" are resultantly lacking in the power to discern that which otherwise would be most obvious to us. It may well be set down as axiomatic that when, in the process of our thinking, we arrive at the inscrutable, the unknowable and the infinite, it is evident that our thought processes are dealing with a form of realism which is higher and beyond the possibilities of our loftiest thought-reaches. And in order to symbolize to itself this condition the intellect poses such terms as "inscrutable," "unknowable" and the "infinite" simply because that is the best it can do. Hence when it is said that space is infinite it is apparent that the mind recognizes that when it contemplates space it is dealing with something whose degree of realism transcends its powers of comprehension. Infinity is a relative term, and in fact, decreases in extensity in the proportion that the consciousness expands and comprehends. It is not unlikely that should the intellect one day discover that it had awakened into union with the space-mind it would immediately reject its preconceived notion of the infinity of space. But we need not wait until the coming of this far off event in the path of psychogenesis; for we can here and now perceive with what must be a higher faculty than the intellect the verity of this conclusion.

But certain it is that the intellect, in the pride and arrogance of its traditional heritage, will not without a great struggle yield the ground and prestige it has held for an aeon of time; and in vain does the intuition serve notice of dispossessal in these premises; but however stubbornly fought the battle, however tenaciously held the position time will discover the weakening of the intellect's hand. Death for the intellect may ensue as a result of the conflict but it will be a death wherefrom it will arise, quickened, revivified and uplifted by its disposer, the intuition, upon the remains of its dead self to a higher and grander state than it has ever enjoyed before.

Space is not static. It is dynamic, potential and kinetic. It is a process, a becoming. Its duration as a process is never ending. Its extensity is limited and finite. The so-called infinity of space is one of the capital illusions of the intellect which can only be removed by an expansion of the consciousness, by a mergence of the individual consciousness with the space-consciousness. In the ever-widening circle of the individual consciousness lesser realities give way to greater as the darkness recedes from the light—the lesser appearing in comparison with the greater, as the consciousness broadens, as matter to spirit, as night to day or as limitation to non-limitation. Thus the most solid facts and conditions of our limited life are but the shadows of the deeper realities which shall be revealed to the Thinker in the days of his larger and more glorious life of freedom from limitations.

And now it will appear that the whole fabric of our knowledge shall have to be reduced to the bare warp and woof; for nothing is real but these. It is as if the Thinker, using the tuitional mind, had been in all times past studying the design woven in the surface of a very thick plush carpet. There are the warp and woof, the long vertical threads which make the plush and the intricate design appearing on the surface. Our knowledge may be likened to the design. It represents the contents of our knowledge. We have not even so much as begun the study of the nature of the vertical threads as they appear beneath the surface to say nothing of beginning the study of the warp and woof. The warp and the woof are the realism of the kosmos; the vertical threads are the roots and stem of the phenomenal world; the design is our sensible world as it appears to the intellect. The life of the intellect has been spent in contemplating this design; while of the hands which wove the carpet, of the mind which directed the hands and of the spirit which vitalized all, it knows nothing nor indeed can it know anything. Where shall we say are those hands, that mind and that spirit which made the carpet possible and an actuality? In vain do we search among the remains, among the soft, glistening threads of the carpet or among the intricacies of the design. For they are not there. They have passed on. The intellect looks at the design or at the vertical threads and because it is unable to follow them to their source, it decides that they are infinite, inscrutable and unknowable. But not so. All that is required are eyes to see and a mind (or shall we say a mind vitalized by the intuition) trained to discern the threads as they point upward with their termini firmly rooted in the warp and woof of the fabric. But we must first master the design, and then turning to the threads, master them. Then shall the doors of kosmic reality swing wide and the Thinker shall be ushered into the eternal palace of kosmic realism wherein he shall find the great secret, the heart, the purpose, the beginning and the end, the very nature of things-in-themselves.

The nature of every degree or condition of realism is so constituted that its qualities, characteristics and limitations are exactly adequate for the satisfaction and fulfillment of all the requirements and needs of every possible state of normal consciousness. So that each degree of reality and each state of normal consciousness is sufficient and complete in itself and mutually satisfies the necessities of each other. The substratum of reality or life which extends from the heart of the kosmos to the extreme limits of the phenomenal universe exists in degrees, not discrete, but continuous. And these merge into one another by insensible stages. Such is the imperceptible continuity of the whole as each degree is gradually immerged into the other that only the limitations of consciousness itself make it to appear as if it were discontinuous. For every stage of realism there is a state of consciousness which answers to it completely and sufficiently. So both the state of consciousness and that of reality, manifesting at any given stage, seem to be complete and final for that stage. Realism or life and consciousness possess only a relative finality fashioned upon the necessities and requirements for any given state of being. Consciousness alone fixes the apparent limits of life; it also determines the state of our knowledge of life. And thus when the Thinker is confined to any stage of reality and congruent degree of consciousness it appears that what he there finds is ample for all his purposes. Accordingly he is convinced that that stage is the final consideration of his scope of motility. It is only when he is able to raise his consciousness to a point where he can contact higher realities that he becomes aware that there are higher stages in which his consciousness may manifest. This peculiarity of the Thinker's consciousness is accentuated when he allows himself to become wholly engrossed with a study of the phenomena of that stage in which he can consciously function. Hence it constantly occurs that men exhausting the study of the phenomenal find themselves floundering upon the beach of the outlying shores of consciousness where in sheer desperation they fall into the illusion that they have indeed reached the limits of manifested life and that beyond those limits there is no organized being. Unconscious are they that in ever widening circles the fertile lands extend and await the awakening of their consciousness when they may till the fallow ground of this new domain and begin again the search for the ultimately real.

With respect to the present powers of consciousness, it cannot be successfully controverted that the concept of tridimensionality of space is sufficient for all purposes. It must be so for it is not only an aspect of the phenomena of space but of reality as well. This fact is attested by the nature of mind that answers to the nature of space. Tridimensionality characterizes the entire extent of consciousness and life, and therefore, of space itself. This characterization may be traced to the very doors of the heart of space where the three become one. Nor would this conception be in the least vitiated if it were allowed that the mass of the phenomena of the supersensuous world, lying in close proximity to the sensuous world, does present itself to the consciousness in a four-dimensional manner and that the phenomena of a still higher plane present themselves in a five or n-dimensional manner to that state of consciousness which may be congruent with them; because then we should be making allowances for the changes in phenomena and their mode of presentation to the consciousness which by no means implies a corresponding change in reality or life. All phenomena are fashioned by the intellect. The phenomenal world is just what the intellect interprets it to be. It is that and nothing more. Its qualities, attributes and characteristics are such as the consciousness gives to it. It exists only for the purposes of the evolving consciousness. And, as an instrument of consciousness, its existence is strictly subject to the evolutionary needs thereof. In that moment that the immediate needs of the consciousness shall no longer be able to find satisfaction in the phenomena of any plane of nature, in that moment the phenomena of that plane disappear, recede and are swallowed up in the maelstrom of eternal reality.

In the gradual expansion of consciousness as it passes through the infinite series of grades of awareness meantime becoming deeper, broader and more comprehensive as it proceeds, there may be observed running through all these planes and orders that which is neither the phenomena of the various planes nor the consciousness; but which must be the substructural basis of both, remaining the same, unchanged and unchangeable. That is the thread of reality, the passage of life itself which is the eternal basis of all. Now it is to this reality, life, that the space-mind is related and in which its roots, its heart and the very center of its being are at one with the divine mind of the kosmos.

The question of dimensionality is solely a concern of the objective or brain-mind which is the intellect. It is one of the ways in which the intellect endeavors to understand phenomena. It is an arbitrary contrivance devised by the intellect for its convenience in studying the world of things. Without it, as obviously appears, the intellect would not be able to go very far in its consideration of the minor problems which inhere in material things. The fourth dimension is but another attitude, another contrivance, which the intellect has devised in order that it may study from another angle the evanescent phenomena of the world of appearances. Having apparently exhausted the possibilities of motion in three dimensions, and being driven on to the acquirement of more picturesque views by the very necessity of its continued growth, it has betaken itself to another higher mountain peak, called "hyperspace" where with larger lenses and higher powered instruments it is beginning to scan the landscapes of a new intellectual realm of consciousness. Yet the celestial wonders of this new-found realm of consciousness remain in undisturbed forgetfulness or neglect. But it is not by a scrutiny of mathetic landscapes nor by a study of the celestial wonders that the Thinker shall one day realize the object of his eagerly pushed quest after the real; for he shall find it, if at all, in the temple of the kosmic mind which is not made by the intellect nor meted and bounded by geometric systems of space-measurement.